The Major Holiday Task I Don’t Do Anymore
And it totally changed my December.
Ten years ago, when my oldest son was six months old, I took on the role of self-appointed Chief Executive Officer of kid gifts. Every year, around this time in November, I’d start a spreadsheet. I’d research ideas, look at gift list recommendations from places like New York Magazine and helpfully send coordination ideas to his grandparents. As he got older, more mental load was added to gift-giving. I would fret, were we giving him too many things or not enough things? Was he going to be spoiled or feel disappointed? What was the correct ratio between plastic junk that would delight him in the moment vs. more expensive gifts I’d hope he’d enjoy for a long time?
Decision fatigue kept growing. What should be from Santa and what should be from us? What should be Santa’s special wrapping paper? How should we spread gifts among Hanukkah and Christmas? (I’m Jewish, but my husband is not and our family celebrates both holidays.)
After our twins were born in 2020, you can only imagine the multiplication of this list. And yet, even when I felt overwhelmed by holiday gifting, I never considered wanting to give up the task or share the load with my husband. It’s a high effort task for sure, but it’s also a high reward one. There’s very little that compares with the pure joy of watching a child open a gift you selected that surprises and delights them. Why would I want to give that up?
However, around this time in 2024, I wasn’t exactly feeling inspired to take on another year of holiday gifting. My husband had been traveling a ton in the fall, which meant I’d done a lot of solo parenting. In addition, I’d also done a lot of election volunteering in my “free time” here in North Carolina. I knew that in order not to be miserable and burned out for the entirety of December and then needing time to recover in January, I needed to offload something. In one of our weekly “business meetings,” I started unenthusiastically ruminating to my husband about the burden of holiday gifts. We also disagreed about what the budget should be.
Then Travis made an offer. “Why don’t I do all the gifts this year?”
“All of the gifts for ALL the kids?
“Yes, and also for our parents. I’ll just do all the gifts.” You can just take the year off,” he suggested.
I paused for a moment. I knew I didn’t want to do everything I’d been doing around the holidays like in years past, and yet, when faced with the opportunity to offload a seriously major task, I felt torn. They are aspects of gifting that I do like, even if I felt uninspired and burdened about doing it for another year. And despite all of my deep personal and professional work about gender roles, there was still a little voice in my head that was saying, “isn’t it MY job as a mom to make sure the kids have a joyful holiday gift experience?” I felt like I was decently good at it and I didn’t HATE it. It had just become... a lot. But wasn’t the right thing to do as a mom to just power through another year?
I knew if I turned it over gifts to my husband, I would be fully turning it over. We have a fairly disciplined practice honed over many years that is similar to what Eve Rodsky talks about in Fair Play. When one of us takes on a domestic task, we own the entire task, which prohibits the other person from meddling or micromanaging.
As I weighed the offer, I had no fears that he would flake or ask me to bail him out at the last minute. But I knew that giving up gifting would cede a lot of control. When I finally agreed to turn over holiday gifts, we also agreed that I would be in charge of kids’ birthday presents, so I would still have some opportunity to get some of that fun present-buying energy going at other times of year.
As the December holidays got closer, I felt better and better about being semi-forced to give up gifting. Travis did his own research and made his own lists. He didn’t consult me on his purchases, which just freed up an entire chunk of my brain. When the kids would make yet another random and unsuitable gift request, I would just say, “talk to Daddy about it!” I felt so much lighter and like I had more breathing room to actually enjoy holiday gatherings. I was also able to take on things like a semi-last minute request to do a Hanukkah lesson at the kids’ school because I didn’t feel so overloaded by the mental load of gifting on top of everything else.
As Christmas and Hanukkah neared, I started telling some of my female friends about our experiment and how great I was feeling about it. Their reactions were fascinating and mainly laced with awe. They said to me, “You are SO brave,” and “ I could NEVER do that” and, “Aren’t you so nervous about how it’s gonna go?” For most of my friends it wasn’t that they thought their male partners couldn’t handle family gifts given the chance. It was just that gifts were so inextricably linked to how they saw themselves as mothers, giving it up seemed ludicrous.
While I don’t have any data about who in hetero couples does more of the family gift-buying, I would say in my informal conversations, a vast majority of the women in these pairs do most or all of the holiday shopping. This is true even if they’re in marriages where they share other kinds of domestic tasks more evenly. There is something about holiday gifts that for many folks feel like the last, untouchable domain of women’s work. Watching my friends feel overburdened by holiday to-dos while feeling unburdened myself made me feel like I’d both won the lottery and made me think in new ways about all of the things women unquestioningly feel is “their job.”
As Christmas neared, I watched Travis feel some of the last-minute anxieties I’d shouldered over the years. He ran out a day or two before Christmas for a few extra bonus gifts because he was worried about the overall “spread.” He navigated a last-minute demand that we hang stockings that then needed to be filled with something, but he got everything wrapped and presented under the tree on Christmas Eve.
On Christmas morning, I joked that I was “the dad.” I had no idea what anyone was getting, and it was unexpectedly fun to be surprised and delighted right along with the kids. Travis didn’t do everything the way I would have, but the kids were happy and everything worked out just fine. I honestly had the most relaxed and enjoyable Christmas morning I can recall since having kids. My expectations for the entire day were low and I felt no angst or responsibility about anyone’s feelings or reactions to gifts. I felt no resentment like in past years about how much work I’d done to make the day special. Knowing about our experiment, my parents and mother-in-law effusively praised Travis for his amazing gift-giving abilities. (I don’t recall ever being so effusively praised when it was my job for the previous nine years.) But overall the holidays were so much better for me, freeing up my bandwidth to actually enjoy time with family instead of feeling like I was hanging on by a stressed-out thread. Travis liked the new role, and we’ve agreed he’ll do it again this year. I couldn’t be happier about it.
(My twins enjoying some Daddy-selected gifts on Christmas morning)
I don’t share this story as a humble brag about my husband. I know many people do not have partners at all or a partner they can hand off major tasks to. I’m sharing this because I want all of us to ask ourselves, “what are the things that take so much energy from the holiday season that we have convinced ourselves we can’t give up?” Maybe for you that’s a draining, long holiday roadtrip, going all out on a Christmas eve dinner, or volunteering to organize the holiday party at work. Next week in the How to Find Your People Club, we’ll be reviving our Don’t Lists (Holiday Edition) so get ready!
In the meantime, I’d love to hear from you all, who handles gifting in your family? How do you deal with the holiday gift mental load? And what are the sacred cow holiday tasks that take a lot out of your but you are reluctant to give up? I want to know in the comments!
Also, if you are interested in more smart ideas about equal partnership, check out my friend Kate Mangino’s new podcast, Equalish.
First of all, I love this. Second of all, I wanted to say that I had a similar experience in giving up Kids Birthdays this year. I handed the entire kit and caboodle to my husband: from brainstorming what the party would entail, researching themes/locations to guest list to day-of food. Honestly, I never felt more free on the day I JUST SHOWED UP at the birthday. Was it how I would have done it? No. But for me the letting go was cathartic and it was excellent for my two daughters to see their father in the role of primary parent for all birthday related tasks. Mom got to show up and jump on the trampoline and have a great time. I sincerely hope that all couples get a chance to try the hand off of one huge life task like this to the person who doesn't normally do it, it was so useful for both myself and my husband, who noted at the end, "that was a lot of work."
This is incredible! Thank you for sharing. My husband and I have come to the agreement that we basically handle gifts for our families of origin - he does his siblings' kids and I do mine.
We are also on a perpetual quest to reduce gift-giving in general, or at least reducing new/plastic gifts in favor of homemade or books. That is a work in progress, for many reasons, but I am glad that it's not totally my mental load to bear.